Dave Beisecker

In several recent pieces, Daniel Dennett has advanced a line of reasoning purporting to show that we should reject the idea that there is a tenable distinction to be drawn between the manner in which we represent the way things are and the manner in which "blessedly simple" intentional systems like thermostats and frogs represent the way things are. Through a series of thought experiments, Dennett aims to show that philosophers of mind should abandon their preoccupation with "real meaning as opposed to ersatz meaning, 'intrinsic' or 'original ' intentionality as opposed to derived intentionality. " In this paper, I lay out the case that Dennett builds against original intentionality, with the aim of showing that, once it has been properly clarified, the notion of original intentionality isn't nearly the myth that Dennett makes it out to be.

In recent discussions of the concept of original intentionality, Dennett raises an intelligible challenge to intentional realists, one that has not been adequately addressed by naturalistic theories of mental representation how can something be correct or mistaken about the way things are, where the applicable normativity is intelligible as such, without ultimately appealing to the background of purposes for which a subject has been designed or selected? I respond directly and constructively to this challenge by profiling in suitably informative vocabulary how creatures with certain expectation-based educable capacities could be originally intentional. By explaining how we can understand such critters as engaging in a kind of rational goal-directed activity that is intelligible quite apart from their designed purposes, I show how they are susceptible to two types of corresponding to distinct ways in which expectations can fail to pick out regularities in their environments. I then expand this simple account to show how critters with more sophisticated means of exploiting their environments are capable of further types of errors. I can therefore capture several distinct kinds of intentional activity, corresponding to different ways in which critters can be seen as getting things right or wrong, including primitive inferential capacities. I also sketch a meow by which members of a community can become beholden to norms that are socially instituted and maintained, although I don't pretend to capture our most sophisticated intentional capacities---those inferential and linguistic capacities in virtue of which we are able to reason with one another about how the world is---my account nevertheless shows that there are interesting pre-linguistic boundaries separating the relative intentional capacities of critters, boundaries that are liable to be overlooked by those who insist that thought or reason is somehow limited to linguistic beings. This project, since it articulates the boundaries around the pre-linguistic intentional capacities from which our full-blown conceptual capacities plausibly evolved, is of evident value for the study of animal cognition, and should prove useful for the task of setting reasonable targets for AI research.

Donald Davidson's argument that non-linguistic creatures lack beliefs rests on two premises: (1) to be a believer, one must have the concept of belief, and (2) to have the concept of belief, one must interpret the utterances of others. However, Davidson's defense of these premises is overly compressed and unconvincing. In a recent issue of Philosophy, Roger Fellows provides new arguments for these premises. In this paper, I explain why I'm not persuaded by Fellows' attempt to bolster Davidson's line of reasoning and cast doubt on Davidson's and Fellows' overall strategy of attaching special significance to the concept of belief.

No philosopher has worked harder than Dan Dennett to set the possibility of machine mentality on firm philosophical footing. Dennett’s defense of this possibility has both a positive and a negative thrust. On the positive side, he has developed an account of mental activity that is tailor-made for the attribution of intentional states to purely mechanical contrivances, while on the negative side, he pillories as mystery mongering and skyhook grasping any attempts to erect barriers to the conception of machine mentality by excavating gulfs to keep us “bona fide” thinkers apart from the rest of creation. While I think he’s “won” the rhetorical tilts with his philosophical adversaries, I worry that Dennett’s negative side sometimes gets the better of him, and that this obscures advances that can be made on the positive side of his program. In this paper, I show that Dennett is much too dismissive of original intentionality in particular, and that this notion can be put to good theoretical use after all. Though deployed to distinguish different grades of mentality, it can (and should) be incorporated into a philosophical account of the mind that is recognizably Dennettian in spirit.

This paper explores the viability of rejecting a largely unchallenged third premise of the conceivability argument against materialism. Fittingly labeled 'type-Z', this reply essentially grants to the zombie lover, not just the possibility of zombies, but also their actuality. We turn out to be the very creatures Chalmers has taken such great pains to conceive and more conventional materialists have tried to wipe off the face of the planet. So consciousness is a wholly material affair. What is conceivable but non-actual are not zombies, but rather 'angelic' beings possessing an acquaintance with supermaterial phenomenal states. After showing how Chalmers' recent discussion of the phenomenal concepts strategy should incline those pursuing such a strategy toward a type-Z response, this paper relates type- Z materialism to similar replies that Chalmers has found 'hard to classify' and closes with a brief remark about how a type-Z materialist might reply to the knowledge argument.